Kirkuk, ethnic minorities and the failure of the state-building process in Iraq
Throughout the 20th century, the Iraqi state was captured by a narrow elite triggering intermittent rebellions and internal upheavals. The ensuing institutional disorder and the multiplicity of overlapping power structures in the country detrimentally affected the decision making process. Both proce...
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| Formato: | Artículo revista |
| Lenguaje: | Español |
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Universidad Nacional de Rosario
2020
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| Acceso en línea: | https://claroscuro.unr.edu.ar/index.php/revista/article/view/52 |
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| Sumario: | Throughout the 20th century, the Iraqi state was captured by a narrow elite triggering intermittent rebellions and internal upheavals. The ensuing institutional disorder and the multiplicity of overlapping power structures in the country detrimentally affected the decision making process. Both processes prevented the evolution of local loyalties into a collective civic identity linked to the state. Furthermore, external interventions deepened internal contradictions and rivalries. Ethnic minorities, such as the Kurds, organized resistance movements demanding greater political representation and self-government. The government crushed the demands and turned the state into a representation of despotic power. Kurdish nationalism made of Kirkuk a central piece of its political foundations and the main demand against the various Iraqi governments. This paper argues that the dispute of multiethnic Kirkuk portrays the core failure of the Iraqi elite's at- tempts to build a coherent political unit in Iraq. The US invasion positioned Kirkuk as the central issue of Kurdish politics and Iraq's knotty problem, exacerbating factionalism and the ethnitization of political discourse. |
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